Storymania - The Promise Ese by June M Harcourt

The Promise Ese (49)
June M Harcourt

“A separate complaint” Hector assured him.

“I thought it was scurvy. Your first husband implies that in his book, doesn’t he Kat. Not for me, a breakdown in health. I’m the last in my line…so far.” So arises this sore-point of his wanting children. Papa told him not to marry an older woman but to stick with the fecund virgins. “Anyway it was a remarkable feat of endurance. If I ever climb in the Himalayas, its stories such as that will inspire me.” Flattery. He really discerned stupidity and poor preparation throughout the British expeditions’ histories. Eschewing dogs when it was dogs that zoomed Bergstrom past the Pole’s checkered flag.

“Keep to Tasmanian peaks for the moment, pet.” Katherine wagged like an off the rack wife. “Emily, Hector, help me, I’m afraid I have chosen another adventurer. If only he could be content with just walking the well-trod trails. Here I’m transporting a statue of a tired, beaten hero and now it seems I may end up with a live willing one. People, mere picnickers can die on even the very easy flat-topped mountains, Mt Wellington, the big’un in Hobart has graves dotted about or memorial cairns at least. It’s below freezing at night so any lost souls freeze to death in their boots.”

At once everyone noticed Gerald’s jogging up and down in go home mode. Emily wished Katherine well for the wedding and for all the sculptures of the future. They pecked each other on the cheek.

“My that’s a beautiful coat.” She automatically fondled its fur edging as she meant to hold it out for Katherine who said graciously:

“Have it, by all means.” Emily laughed.

‘What, it must be brand new.”

“Please, to remember me by. I feel that cloth of yours has repaired some kind of breach, unblocked a tunnel in fact. I will mention it in my book.” Without breaking her train of words, she stood precisely in front of Gerald, took his arms then wrapped them around herself in the manner of a fox-fur stole. Something fatherly-daughterly about the combination and their posture, perhaps his receding hair. For so long Katherine had come over as a tomboyish elder sister. Hallelujah because Hector, momentarily, and Gerald had made her feel little and young. “Richards sister is going to assist me in Tasmania. She is married to the governor, you know, and has written books herself. Edith Throckmorton, thrilling books, adventures for boys, increasingly for girl readers, I am most pleased to report. What did we have to read about? Moral tales or love stories. Take the coat otherwise I shall leave it here accidentally.” Katherine grasped its shoulders and draped their softness around Emily. ‘There,” she purred, “ perfect fit. Ask your husband what he thinks.’ Hector found it ‘most becoming’, in fact he buttoned it.

Gerald gave his own coat to Katherine to wear. “I’m worried about your bronchials.”

“Oh what a sacrifice! It is almost summer.”

     Emily unbuttoned the coat and hung it in the hallway after they had left. Hector popped the compass onto the mantlepiece, crowding the symmetry of standard china mantlepiece-ware.

“Do you think she meant anything by it? The memory of that first journey always makes you angry. And furthermore…”

Hector interrupted thoughtfully: “Its her way of calving off her old self. The compass represents the Hunt portion, even the coat stands for something, for the wordly-wise womanly part. What’s left? An independent girl again innocent before her marriage.”

‘Too philosophic to be entirely accurate.” Emily had relaxed into fireside tedium again. “She might just as well have tossed the things into the Thames...but giving the compass to you? Whatever for. Maybe for luck … don’t try and sell it whatever you do. Stash it away for our children. Gwennie is very possessive of polar paraphernalia. She’s talking of going – all the time its “When I go South…”

“Well, of course, she’ll be the first woman.”

     He had to see her alone one last time. With the compass she was consigning him to darkness as surely as Hunt had been consigned to his ice palace of a grave.



                                                                     * * *

    How to begin? ‘Bill and I chummed up shipboard and got into the habit of taking our constitutional together every night after supper. We would climb to the top of a nearby hill and look down at the ship and the hut and discuss everything under the sun particularly religion and social reform, the worthy aspects of life and of course the expedition magazine I was editing since he was the illustrator and layout designer. Bill had a heathen sense of humour, however and we found a good many of the same things funny. The antics of the local penguins and our dogs, a neverending source of amusement to the rest of the company, bored us because we could see the dogs were meant for a serious purpose and that penguins with their marvellous talent for survival in the cruellest habitat on earth, said something for the wonder of God’s creation. But nether did we flinch at the distastefulness of some of the dogs behaviour- their tendency to consume their own excrement, a habit that brought out the squeamish side of Hunt, the irritating priggishness of his nature although it was funny to see him wolfing down the food ration after it had been knock to the floor of the tent. He even helped to feed the dogs the remnants of their own kind – but that happened after reading Darwin – precursor of a character transformation, subsequently he believed he was fitter than all the rest, therefore the natural leader, the toughest and owner of the most robust sensibility. He would foist Darwin upon us the same as Bill whisking out the psalms on a Sunday. Billy fell under his spell. He was flattered by Hunts attentive listening and marvelling over all facts medical, scientific and zoological that Billy could recount or the Tennyson and Longfellow he could recite. He felt honoured and privileged to be the leaders favourite. Whilst I fell by the wayside, having no power to conduct the expedition or to make decisions. For whatever reason, Billy just fawned at the feet of the man who did. And Hunt lapped it up and he looked for excuses to go off with Bill alone as happened at the Furthest South when they deliberately bestowed on me responsibility for the last few dogs, while going off themselves on ski to reconnoiter the surrounding country. Never was my isolation felt more acutely than at that moment and at the very end when the two of them raced ahead to the welcoming party. Not the kindest way to treat a sick man even though I had been the one to spot depot flags and keep them on a straight course. A man without pity – the fittest, the strongest, the wisest so he thought. Bill had initially urged him to include me for the southern journey. I’ve wondered if the challenge of winning Bill away from me spurred him to the decision. His jealousy. A god-given opportunity for trying on the charm. So that’s why he resented me, because Bill and I were friends. That’s why he maligned me to all and sundry. I think he felt a perverse kind of affection for Billy…the way Bill would rave about the conversations they shared…

A sleeping-bag is a private place. Three men in a tent jammed into their bags while a wheedling blizzard, attacks ears and tempers...impossible to concentrate on the excruciating ‘Origin of Species’. One moves and the others are elbowed. The two of them…keen on each other?’

       She’d asked if he wanted to contribute his side of the story to the upcoming biography. What could he say? That Hunt nursed unnatural feelings for Bill, possessive, queer, unhealthy? Hector couldn’t be certain. He could only be certain that they had tried to exclude him from the journey in every possible way then whispered their fears whilst he cowered poorly at the back, coughing and gagging and groaning and fighting for his life. ‘I fear he won’t last the night.’ Well hoots to you – doubters. What did they think he would give up the ghost and take a memorial ice-spire and homemade cross scarring the ice-waste as his reward for sticking to it until the very end, until the last fortnight of the return plod? Ski ferried him then. Poor Bill to be entranced by the smiley Captain Hunt and his beguiling charms. Poor Bill to eventually perish in a tent with him, the magician. Poor Bill to choose the wrong horse. Here was the right horse salivating for the next race. It was the navy. That was it. Turned straight-laced young men askew. That Sir Swithem like an insidiously devilish shepherd, driving flocks of young men to strange practices. Plenty of that in the merchant navy as well…but …the way they swanked in their epaulets.

      He conceptualized Hunt as the same blend of wizard-adviser dying in the middle of two weaker vessels, they bewitched by his magical, deathly exhortations to die for the country, to save their leaders face from the red of disgrace. The spell of the white. The master of the spell of the white. The master conjuring blizzards into creation, stealing white men for the white cavern of death and epic immortality. And Carpenter like the heretic, the Robin Hood who saves people, Carpenter’s skin blasted the white of angels. Why should Hunt have been the presence? His obsession with Carpenters quick marches, his envious comparisons of their times, maps… would an obsession with these have lead to his compounding guilt and the mystical contrition? Who knows? Hector’s memory vomited up their celebratory dinner alone with Swithem on the ‘Deliverer’, the very night it had steamed up the Thames and home. Stewards winked at him, at Hunt, most every other crew member being ashore. What intimacy! Swithem’s dining with his two best boys? Carpenter made a vow that night – to make his own way. To spit on the epaulets.



                                                                       * * *



     “What do you think he’s gazing at? The life of his son stretching forwards, straining to see something he will never see – straining to see past the horizon of death to our life here. Straight and healthy and strong – not a reeds breath bent. I don’t see him…I’ve trained myself not to see him at the last.” As she spoke she squinted upwards into the glare of a bright sky.

“It’s a marvellous piece of work”

“I know, I know, I know. I think he likes to look out over this park, to watch people exercising outdoors.” Katherine swivelled on the bench so that she faced Hector. He blurred until her eyes readjusted. The statue of Hunt presided like a judge or king. His ski pole or walking staff a great blossoming rod. “He would want us to be friends. He would have granted you credit for the Stalwart rescue, even if reluctantly. He has given the country deaths to be proud of, I mean given us a model of dying without complaint. I’m sure they all followed it in the war.” Before she embarked for Tasmania, Hector wanted to give her his jottings on the journey of three young men reaching for 90 degrees south but settling for 82, the journey that had turned sour. She had agreed to meet him in the park. He handed her the rough notes intended for the biography – his side of the argument. She read it swiftly while they sat on the bench in front of Hunt’s statue, birds twittering, people passing, children tugging and wrestling in bushes, embracing the inviting grass. She then said:

“I will think about this.”

      She looked at his hands and shoes and thought, I must have been mad. She steadily assessed how civilization had disfigured and bridled him, his paunch and his dull suit, his incessant smoking – only the creases of his face told of adventures in the sun and ice, as if frosty fingers had clawed him. Now life was lightening. Just as she had experienced an attraction say to the fine dark hairs on the back of his hand, to his nape, she now felt nothing. Her man was wholesome. This man was marked. The South pole marked people – any obsession she thought unhealthy – more so their sleeping in bed at night with a white mistress – treacherously shrouding herself in the azure blue before tip-toeing forth and shoving them over the edge. ‘Blue Gum’ had spoken of the witch – entrancingly crystal one moment, horrendous the next. He had no fear of Her. Had Richard materialized to help him fight Her off? She let Hector hold her hand; press her knuckles with his Pandora’s thumb.

I must have been mad, he thought .We are from different worlds. Her set could never accommodate me. All that thrilling talk about the male anatomy –the thews of her soldier, his loins and whatnot. The music. The progressive political thinking.

“I saw you in your cardigan and that was it, ping!” she said, trying to expand what she felt. “I was depressed that first day. An insane loneliness attacks me sometime. Tension caused by overwork. Where would you be if Emily was taken from you unexpectedly, tearing your hair out and wildly calling? No –you are too self-controlled, you touch me very surely…my affair with Jansens was not as you appear to think. Will I send you a note about it? If you are able to imagine it was Richard’s spirit guiding you, consider me on his terms. As a devoted and adoring wife. He would have killed you if I had asked him to, pursued you to that rotten island and splintered your boat on the rocks. How could you have treated me so shamefully? It makes me shiver…Anyway I said I was mad, with body- need I suppose, but today I am faculty-full. Jealous of he and Bill were you? A pity neither of them are here to plead their own case. You will only receive mention in the book as an example of speed he strove to emulate. The weather was kinder to you. Look at those children – don’t you wish to be young again? I feel that young. Do you? You look old and grizzled to me. I know the value of fidelity now. Gerald will be my one and only forever. But, you know, it is painful to have susceptible men bundling themselves on your doorstep day and night…they come a’callin’”

“The birds?”

She laughed hesitantly. “Anyway, I have loads of appointments. I can’t even kiss you, I’m so sublimely faithful to my new husband already.” Hector kissed her hand, fairy-like. They looked down the tubes of each other’s eyes, down into the pits of happiness. Their urgent hopefulness. He half-whispered:

“Hunt loved Bill, Bill liked me, Hunt hated me for it. Include that in the memoir, Rabbit. By the way, I’m sorry for coming to your house that day, I’m sorry for molesting you, I’m sorry for liking your work. And when Hunt married you – I was sorry – because had it been me I would have moved mountains to take you South.”

“True? On the surface you are the soul of conformity.” Her eyes widened.

“Beats a poets heart within .”

Hector felt emboldened into acting the beaten lover, full of pathos and wistful charm. Green as speckled jade, her eyes in the sunlight. He saw Emily shaking the hands of elderly benefactors then he felt rather than witnessed the vivacity that was Katherine Hunts. He wanted them both. Why was it people embodied only fragments of individual perfections? Why did each woman contain elements but none the whole kaboodle? Polygamy one answer. His grand new Southern civilization – Swiftian. Many wives and many husbands each with tags expostulating their traits, where one collected sets of tickets to trade in for the multiplicious being. Katherine’s burning for happiness, Moony's spongy, earthy comfy simplicity, Em's pervading airiness and the watery mystery of the She combined in a batter of ambrosial cake the like the world had never tasted. The air, the heat, the cream, the colour. He told Katherine.

“I’ll tell you what. I make the perfect body, using various parts, you can infuse into it the perfect soul.” she said, leaning closer. “Of course it will have to be a man.’

The notion interested her but the last thing she wanted was to have him waylaying her with interesting talk. “I have to go. You see him,” she pointed to her monumental shape of husband. “Neither of us will be standing so proudly in a hundred years. I will be a skeleton. I have made him a god, not the God because I don’t believe, but the potent god of the ancients.” She kissed Hector on either cheek in the french fashion . He hung there strangely, silent then suddenly delved into a pocket and brought forth his shard of starry glass. His eye fuzzed as he peered through the groove-rays of starlight. She was real. He thought it might have been fun to have some input from the statue, but he couldn’t even induce a ghost – shows how sane he was and how insane, overwrought, edgy before.

“What is that?” she asked.

“It’s my other compass,” he answered. “I’ve looked through this into mirrors and seen the direction I must take. It’s also a navigational tool.” She twirled it about in her fingers.

“Its very sharp.”

“Are you au fait with red-indian lore, Katherine, we must be blood-brothers. My life has been a turmoil – you know the begging rounds and the disappointments. I…many men have implored you to save them from self-harm, misery – am I right?”

“Not too many.” She gestured towards the statue. “If only he could have loved himself and been happy within himself. Life is wonderful, I’ve told you…I tell everyone.” She sighed.

“It’s working. You see how young I look..”

“Well…” she smiled a rapacious smile. It gnawed at the earnest resolve of the stony-faced Captain Hunt. Two wasps buzzed about him.

“There exists a much-documented ritual in the annals of red-indian lore,” Hector narrated, shaking, fiercely determined, “so sayeth my man Morris – a bonding ritual. We mingle our blood and become brothers. Do you dare? It’s not mucky. Just like this…” He sliced gingerly into his right index finger-tip until a drop of ruby blood arose. She looked horrified.

“What?”

“Now you do the same.”

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